Thursday, June 23, 2011

No home, no rape, but still locked up

The Bondi caveman says police held secret information that would have quashed a sex crime charge against him and kept him in custody for 18 months, writes Les Kennedy. FOR more than 11 years, Peter Millhouse lived in a sandstone cave overlooking Bondi Beach. It was where the 55-year-old chose to recite his poems to passers-by in the hope of payment while relying on food handouts from locals.

He became known as the ''Bondi caveman'' but some residents and the council sought to evict him because of the unsightly camp and for his own welfare.

Then the law intervened. On Melbourne Cup Day in 2009, a then 21-year-old woman visiting the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition spent six hours feeding birds and chatting to Millhouse.

Within an hour of her leaving the cave about dusk, he was grappling with police, arrested for allegedly raping the woman despite his protests that the sex was consensual.

He spent the next 18 months behind bars, awaiting trial, during which time he says he was assaulted.

But on the eve of his trial last month, the Director of Public Prosecutions dropped the rape charge. Now Millhouse intends to sue the NSW police for wrongful imprisonment by withholding information from the DPP that would have led to the charge being dismissed earlier, says his lawyer, Paul Williams.

The case raises questions about the role of police in not revealing to the DPP information about the troubled background of the alleged victim, including a history of unsubstantiated sexual assault claims and multiple personality disorder.

Background information about the woman first emerged last month, on the day Justice Reg Blanch was to assign a District Court judge to hear the trial before a jury.

Crown prosecutors were granted a one-day adjournment to respond to a request from Williams for information on the woman, such as medical reports or criminal history.

The DPP had not received such details from Waverley police, who charged Millhouse. When police provided files to the DPP later in the day, copies were passed to his defence team.

The next day, without explanation, the DPP's office told Blanch it had ''no-billed'' the charge of intercourse without consent. In no-billing, the DPP does not have to state its reasons for dropping a charge.

The files, seen by The Sun-Herald, contain reports from police - including officers attached to joint police and Department of Community Services child mistreatment teams - of investigations dating back to 2002, when the woman was 14. They included numerous unsubstantiated claims by her of being attacked and sexually assaulted by strangers - one calling himself the devil - in bush and at her home.

One report investigated by police included allegations that she was raped many times at a religious centre by an African immigrant who said it would rid her of a demon.

In the 2006 report of the alleged incidents at the religious centre, police wrote: ''History of mental illness and unsubstantiated sexual assault reports.''

In 2003 the woman made three reports to police about being dragged into bush and raped. After reviewing them, police said: ''There is insufficient evidence to proceed … no further action to be taken.'' Two more allegations of sexual assault that year were dismissed.

The files also contained a report on the woman four months after the alleged Bondi rape, when Millhouse was in custody, that was never declared to the defence team. It said she was found slumped in her car covered in dirt and insect bites near a coastal lake with no recollection of having left her western Sydney home the night before.

In the car police found a fresh lamb's heart, a broken cross with a date of birth engraved on it, a kitchen knife, scissors and a Stanley knife.

''Police are unable to determine if the [victim] slaughtered a lamb and took its heart,'' the report said. It also said her guardians had informed officers she had four personalities, each with a different name.

Williams said police should have reviewed the woman's background and given that information to the police legal branch and the DPP for review.

In no-billing the rape charge against Millhouse, the DPP did not drop charges of assaulting two police officers that arose from his arrest - one was allegedly bitten and the other kicked in the groin.

On Friday Millhouse's legal team again appeared before Justice Blanch in the Downing Centre District Court and received an adjournment to July 8, after advising he would make an application to the DPP to no-bill the assault charges and would also make an application for costs.

After his arrest Millhouse lost his cave home - council staff removed his property - and he lives with a former Bondi family who have supported him while on bail.